Google and Facebook hate each other. There, we said it. Oh, the rivalry didn't start out as personal, though maybe it became personal after Googlers became Xooglers in a gradual yet steady exodus to the hottest social network in the world. Mostly, the hatred manifests in the jealous games of user data keep-away between the companies. How did we get here? By looking back at the history between these two companies eWEEK believes it started in October 2007 when Microsoft pumped $240 million into Facebook for a 1.6 percent stake in the social network, which had only about 50 million users at that point. This was a clear slap in the face against Google. After all, Microsoft and Google were sworn enemies. Google viewed Facebook as a solid up-and-coming Internet company for whom it would like to serve some ads. Instead, Facebook went with the Evil Empire in Redmond and the two companies, which together are now Google's archrivals, have never been closer, even as Facebook's domain has spread to include 750 million-plus users. Sensing a powerful enemy, whose walled garden threatened to hoard valuable social data from its hungry search-engine crawlers, Google launched some initiatives of its own, after which Facebook responded in kind. This slide show highlights the evolution of the Internet duel Google and Facebook have been waging.

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Microsoft Investment

Microsoft, which had inked a seemingly innocent ad deal with Facebook in October 2006, agreed to infuse Facebook with $240 million in cash to grow. Microsoft also became the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and further agreed to sell advertising for the company internationally as well as in the U.S. Microsoft and Facebook's partnership has evolved and matured each year. "I feel that this event is what made Google so antagonistic against Facebookbecause it actively rejected Google's embrace for Microsoft's purse. As a result, it labeled Facebook more as a threat to its online dominance than as a potential partner," wrote Facebook employee Jinghao Yan on Q&A Website Quora.